Aurora seniors finding a place in poetry

Peyton Kauffman and Garrett Janzen started out with poems they wrote for class, just like everyone else.

Today, they'll be reading those poems at the Nebraska State Capitol.

"I did not imagine it would take me to the Capitol," Janzen says of his poetry. "I do not in any way consider myself a poet."

Cathie English, Janzen's English teacher, has to interject.

"But he's very good at it," she says quickly.

She's not the only one who saw the talent. Kauffman and Janzen, both seniors at Aurora High School, were among the students chosen to read their original poems at the Capitol this afternoon through the Nebraska Writing Project's Poetry of Place program.

The students were assigned poems based on George Ella Lyon's poem "Where I'm From," which uses phrases like "I am from the dirt under the back porch" and "I'm from fudge and eyeglasses" to illustrate the poet's roots.

Kauffman and Janzen's poems were judged to be among the state's best student entries depicting rural Nebraska.

Kauffman's poem focused on her family and friends, with stanzas devoted to her mom and dad, siblings and extended family.

It's filled with sharp turns of phrase like, "I'm from made-up songs in made-up keys" and "I am from weekends planned by the radar. / From praising the rain but cursing the storm."

Kauffman said she enjoyed including inside jokes in her poem, then seeing her family's reaction to them while reading it.

She's only an occasional poet, but she said it's more natural for her than writing papers.

"With poetry, it easier to show your passion for a topic, rather than writing an essay," she said.

Janzen submitted a similarly structured poem about places and experiences like "Bend in bark where I tried to carve my name" and "my first bass at the cabin."

He also had a poem selected about the creek, field and forest near his old house in Aurora that helped stir his interest in wildlife and biology.

Janzen makes it clear that he's a guy's guy -- he plays football, drives a muscle car, all that stuff. But when the experiences are this vivid, it pours from the pen pretty easily.

"You have to have something to care about to write about it," he said. "If you don't care about what you're writing, it's not going to be worth reading."

English agreed. That's why she's pushing poetry describing familiar places so hard in the classroom -- and why she's so proud of Kauffman and Janzen's success.

"It's not just an essay," English said. "You really have to understand what it means to be from a place.”